Texas Supreme Court and wrongful imprisonment laws

Being wrongly convicted and imprisoned for a serious crime takes an almost unimaginable toll.

The individual can't work, can't fulfill obligations, can't atone for past mistakes, can't freely go about the business of life.

This is as true for someone with no previous criminal record (except the erroneous one) as for someone who has run afoul of the law and is back in society trying to rebuild a life.

Texas has long recognized that wrongful imprisonment comes with physical, emotional and financial consequences. And, since 2009, the state has paid $80,000 per year served to those who've been proved innocent of the crimes for which they were incarcerated.

But the state comptroller's office, which handles payments, has read the Texas Wrongful Imprisonment Act (now the Tim Cole Act) strictly to avoid overcompensating former inmates.

When the Texas Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the comptroller was interpreting the act too narrowly, it was a reasonable conclusion consistent with the intent of the law.

The Tim Cole Act recognizes that the state has a responsibility to those who've lost years of their lives because of the government's mistake. But the law doesn't allow payments to anyone who served time for a wrongful conviction at the same time they were serving out a legitimate sentence for which they would have been in prison anyway.

The Supreme Court had to decide how the law treats parolees sent back to prison to complete old sentences only because of wrongful convictions.

Billy James Smith served 20 years after being convicted of aggravated sexual assault and sentenced to life in 1986. DNA testing showed he didn't commit the crime.

But when he applied for almost $1.6 million in compensation for the 19 years and 11 months of his wrongful sentence, the comptroller said he was entitled to almost $67,000 less. That's because he'd been paroled in 1983 for a 1970 robbery conviction, and the sexual assault conviction, though erroneous, meant he had to finish the robbery sentence.

Smith argued that he should receive full compensation because he wouldn't have returned to prison on a parole revocation had the state not wrongly sent him there.

The comptroller argued that the statute doesn't make distinctions between parolees and others inmates; it just says someone serving concurrent sentences for separate crimes isn't eligible for compensation.

Justice David Medina wrote for a unanimous court the statute "can reasonably be read to support either interpretation."

But the court was persuaded to side with Smith because of the law's purpose and because the attorney general had previously ruled that full compensation was due to a probationer required to serve two sentences when he was wrongly convicted of a drug-related crime in the Tulia scandal.

The Friday ruling was even better news for former parolees Ronald Gene Taylor, who spent more than 14 years wrongly imprisoned for a rape in Houston, and Gregory Wayne Wallis, who served almost 17 years, wrongly convicted in Dallas County of burglary of a habitation with intent to commit sexual assault.

The AG's office on Monday said the comptroller would pay Taylor $1.12 million in addition to $20,000 he previously was offered, and Wallis would get $147,000 on top of almost $1.3 million already paid. All three men are receiving monthly annuities ranging from $9,900 for Smith to almost $6,200 for Taylor.

Having seen the confusion the law has caused, the Legislature should use this session to clarify how compensation should be counted for probationers and parolees sent behind bars only because the criminal justice system failed.

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